“And do you call eight hundred pounds a trifle? If so, I do not.”
“They will probably make no such demand as that.”
“But I tell you they do make such a demand, and have made it. The man whom I saw, and who told me that he was Tozer’s friend, but who was probably Tozer himself, positively swore to me that he would be obliged to take legal proceedings if the money were not forthcoming within a week or ten days. When I explained to him that it was an old bill that had been renewed, he declared that his friend had given full value for it.”
“Sowerby said that you would probably have to pay ten pounds to redeem it. I should offer the man some such sum as that.”
“My intention is to offer the man nothing, but to leave the affair in the hands of my lawyer with instructions to him to spare none;—neither myself nor any one else. I am not going to allow such a man as Sowerby to squeeze me like an orange.”
“But, Lufton, you seem as though you were angry with me.”
“No, I am not. But I think it is as well to caution you about this man; my transactions with him lately have chiefly been through you, and therefore—”
“But they have only been so through his and your wish: because I have been anxious to oblige you both. I hope you don’t mean to say that I am concerned in these bills.”
“I know that you are concerned in bills with him.”
“Why, Lufton, am I to understand, then, that you are accusing me of having any interest in these transactions which you have called swindling?”